HOLYOKE - Standing on the site of a former shooting range Monday, officials announced that Holyoke, Springfield and North Brookfield will each receive $200,000 each in federal money to clean up or assess ground contamination as part of a $111.9 million nationwide cleanup effort.

Owens serves as the office director for site remediation and restoration for Region 1 of the EPA. Owens and numerous federal, state and local officials announced the grants at a former firing range on Mountain Road which will be cleaned up using a $200,000 grant.

Statewide, $7.1 million in grants will be distributed to clean up or assess so-called "brownfield" sites, which are mainly former industrial sites not being used, Owens said.

Springfield's $200,000 grant will come from a $1 million state grant to assess possible cleanup sites in the city, according to Samalid M. Hogan, of the city's planning and economic development office. Exactly where Springfield's $200,000 will be spent has not been determined, but Hogan said, "Our main focus is the South End."

North Brookfield also received $200,000 to clean up a brownfield site at 14 South Common St.

As for other regional communities, the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission received $895,000 to assess brownfield sites in Adams, Dalton, North Adams and Pittsfield.

The Franklin Regional Council of Governments, which assists 26 communities in Franklin County, received $200,000 to inventory and assess brownfield sites.

Holyoke officials were thrilled to receive the $200,000 grant to clean up the rural, 11-acre site on the western side of the Mount Tom range.

"To get the money to clean up is really exciting to us," said Kathleen G. Anderson, the city's director of the office of planning and development.

The city will actually receive the grant money in late September or early October, according to senior City Planner Karen Mendrala. Bids to clean up the site would be solicited soon after, meaning the cleanup project would start next spring, Mendrala said.

A 2004 assessment of the former firing range discovered lead, arsenic and antinomy in the ground, Sullivan said. As part of the cleanup project, officials hope to enlist the help of Nuestras Raices, a community group, and Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. Specifically, trees will hopefully be planted on site.

The city, which owns the site, plans to sell four of the 11 acres as two residential building lots, Mendrala said. The other seven acres would likely become conservation land.

Homeowner Lani E. Sattler, who lives across the street, said she was thrilled the property will be cleaned up. But she added she hopes the site is not developed.

"We'd like to see it cleaned up and left alone," Sattler said.

Sattler's family used to own the site being cleaned up before it was taken by eminent domain in the 1920s to use as a firing range. Sattler's family has owned farmland there for generations, including her own 50-acre horse farm.